


love and a million things just like it

by honeykaspbrak



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Complicated Emotions, Drinking, Multi, Poverty, Smoking, Talking, Weed, canon divergence but not in any big way, cause it’s the best season and i’m still so nostalgic for it, lip is such a tragic character im so sad, lip’s pov cause i haven’t written in it before ooo, money struggles, sad lonely lip, set in season one baby, sex as a coping mechanism, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 06:26:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15902700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeykaspbrak/pseuds/honeykaspbrak
Summary: “out.” ian says, which makes lip feel like his big brother in a different way, in an annoyed and responsible way. ian, two years younger than him, worse grades but probably smarter anyways, always grinning but edgy and suspicious if you hit him at the wrong angle.that’s why lip doesn’t push it, doesn’t ask for specifics. he just saysalright, man, use a condomand ian laughs and hangs up and lip is left with a cold cavity in his chest.





	love and a million things just like it

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been reading a lot of Super Old shameless fic like ,, 2012/2013 and it’s making me emo and nostalgic so take this plotless garbage

sometimes no one comes home at night. work, sleepovers for the little kids, and most likely ian is fucking a guy way too rich for him behind a dumpster in an alley. lip doesn’t even mind, prefers it, actually, because he can stretch out on the couch and smoke a joint or three and take shots of the vodka that fiona will look at him strangely for touching. (she never says no, but something in her eyes makes it feel illicit, upsetting. he doesn’t get drunk in front of her.) he doesn’t mind it at all until it starts getting dark and the house makes all the noises it makes at night - noises that are usually barely noticeable above the ruckus. anyways, lip is alone tonight, with shitty sour weed in his lungs and heavy limbs that won’t let him pull up off the couch. 

he calls ian, even though ian pretty much stopped taking lip’s calls when he graduated eighth grade, and lip doesn’t even know why. ian leaves messages scrawled on sticky notes and slapped up on the frame of lip’s bed instead; _work after school, home by eight. don’t take my lighter today dipshit. i borrowed a twenty from your pocket to pay ricky markowitz back._ okay, if lip really thinks about it, he feels like it might be that ian doesn’t want to pull out his shitty hand-me-down nokia that has like thirty minutes a month around his prissy ass ROTC friends. but lip doesn’t like to really think about it. 

he doesn’t think about it until fiona is crying at the kitchen table at one in the morning when the electricity bill that they can’t pay is due at eleven. he doesn’t think about it except for all the time, in tiny secret ways that he barely allows himself to recognize. selling marlboros loose to twelve year olds at the park, buck fifty each. writing essays until his fingers go numb every fall. stealing everything he can from the supermarket on fifth, slipping through the aisles until the pockets on his jacket are bulging and he’s jangly with nerves. he tries to do it all, slip his share quietly in the squirrel fund, without thinking about it. it’s too hard to think about (too hard to watch his little siblings cry about being teased for their clothes, their bologna and day-old sale roll lunches, the holes in the toes of their too-small shoes). 

lip remembers watching sixteen year old fiona break down at the checkout counter of the shop-and-save, stacking nickels in a shaky column and sending lip to put back things they needed but couldn’t afford. 

anyways, ian doesn’t pick up and lip is not surprised. he rolls over on the couch, tossing his phone to the carpeted floor and breathing out a big lungful of acrid smoke. he barely even feels it, god, isn’t getting any of the nice head-rushy benefits that drove him to take the time to roll a joint in the first place. 

 

he calls karen jackson, because of course he does. she’s on his front porch ten minutes later, wearing a puffy tan jacket and a knit hat with her pretty face all flushed and wind-burnt. lip makes a pot of coffee and she sits on the counter to drink a cup, grinning at him over the rim of the mug. they end up fucking like they always do, on the couch with her shirt pushed up over her tits and his boxers down around his ankles. he moans into her mouth and tells her _god, feels so good, you’re so good, fuck_ , and he can tell when she comes because she tightens up around him and gasps in this shuddery way and scrapes her nails over his shoulders. he flips her over and comes with a groan and she laughs a little as he pulls out and presses a kiss into her breastbone. 

it makes him feel a little better. a little less lonely. 

they walk through wintery rain to the kash-and-grab where mickey milkovich got shot in the thigh for instant noodles for dinner, and he holds her hand and lets her swing his arm and they grin at each other and it feels okay. lip knows that things always go back to being broken at the end of these types of nights, but for now it feels okay. 

he takes her home, cuddled under his arm in the late-night-late-fall chill of the air, and waves from the street when the light in her bedroom flicks on and she pulls aside a curtain and is grinning down at him. he stands there in the darkness for a while afterwards, once her curtain has fallen back into place and the movement behind it has ceased. lip doesn’t want to go home to his empty house. 

“you with karen jackson?” is the first thing that ian says when he, unexpectedly, miraculously, picks up the phone on the fourth ring. lip jumps over a crack in the sidewalk five blocks from the house. 

“nah, asshole.” he blows smoke through his teeth and listens to ian snort. he can’t tell what’s happening in the background, behind ian’s voice. “i just dropped her off.”

“take a shower, ‘kay?” ian says in this annoying voice that makes lip laugh a little bit. “i can’t sleep when you smell like pussy.” 

“least i don’t smell like geriatric ball sweat.” lip cracks, and ian does this proper gay gasp thing through the speaker. 

“oh, fuck off. you’re a bastard.”

“yet i’m not the one who doesn’t know my dad.” teasing ian like this has always been second nature, punches in the muscles of his biceps, loud laughter and disbelieving eyes. 

“jesus, lip.” and lip might think he’s gone too far, but he hears ian’s smile through the phone. cause, you know, he knows ian better than he knows himself. 

“where are you, man?”

“out.” ian says, which makes lip feel like his big brother in a different way, in an annoyed and responsible way. ian, two years younger than him, worse grades but probably smarter anyways, always grinning but edgy and suspicious if you hit him at the wrong angle. 

that’s why lip doesn’t push it, doesn’t ask for specifics. he just says _alright, man, use a condom_ and ian laughs and hangs up and lip is left with a cold cavity in his chest. 

 

he gets wasted off the bottle of subpar whiskey that he keeps stashed away under his bed and passes out in his boxers on the bottom bunk. 

 

“ _lip_. lip, dude, get up, get up.” it’s ian, sounding young and sick, or maybe he’s just tired, and lip wants to open his eyes to check on his brother but his head is pounding so hard that he can’t move. 

“what is it?” he murmurs, feels ian’s hands brush up against his chin as he yanks the blankets down. “fuck, man, i’m hungover as all hell-“

“yeah, i know.” and now lip opens one eye because ian sounds icy and kind of scared and _jesus_ , it makes lip’s stomach lurch. “you puked.”

“oh.” lip forces himself up on his forearms and it makes his whole head pound so badly that he has to squeeze his eyes shut and push his forehead down into his hands. “sorry.”

“ _lip._ ” ian says again, urgently, and lip can’t understand it. 

“jesus, ian, i feel like shit.”

“yeah, makes sense. and since when do you get blackout drunk on weeknights?” lip is too tired, too nauseous, for the bite in ian’s voice. 

“since when do you give a shit?” lip opens his eyes again just in time to see ian sock him in the shoulder with a closed fist. “ _ow,_ what the _fuck?_ ” 

“you’re like frank.” it stops lip cold, it really does, as he stares up at his redhead brother in the too-messy-too-bright bedroom they all share. carl’s action figures are on the floor. ian never fucking picks up his boxers. 

“no.” lip says, his automatic, knee-jerk impulse to deny, deny, deny. 

when he learned that frank wasn’t ian’s real dad, lip had so much red-hot jealous anger coursing through him for a second that he thought he might pass out. right there at the dinner table. 

“i’m not.” he adds, smelling the vomit now (stomach churning, mouth tasting like dog shit). ian just watches him, all huge-eyed and disappointed. “i’m _not_.”

“kay, lip. whatever you say.” ian doesn’t bother not letting the door slam behind him, even though fiona will scold him for it once he’s down in the kitchen. lip falls back into his pillow, wanting to scream and to sob in equal measures. 

 

ian finds him later on the back porch, smoking off the lingering fingers of his hangover and trying in vain to get through the last two chapters of a book he’s already supposed to have an essay written on. he sits down heavy beside lip, wearing too-big jeans and a stained wifebeater. 

“sorry. for what i said.” lip holds grudges like it’s a second job but ian has always apologized to him, always. lip doesn’t know where he gets that. not from frank, that’s for sure, not from the fuck-up, alcoholic gene that runs so heavy in lip’s blood. 

“it’s fine.” lip says, even though the thought is still burning more acidic in his throat than the whiskey he puked up. 

“no. i shouldn’t have told you that.”

“true though.” lip holds out the cigarette, but ian doesn’t take it. just stares out into the yard with a red, red mouth and eyes that look bleary and sleep deprived. 

“it’s not, actually.” ian rubs a closed hand over his scalp. lip takes a deep drag and almost coughs on the outtake. “you’re, like, a million things he’s not. a million times better.”

“thanks.” lip murmurs, because it’s nice of him to say. even if neither of them, sitting in the cold with bare arms and feet, think it’s really true.


End file.
